Shutting Down the Vital Organs of Your Healthcare System

Anyone not convinced by now that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was fashioned by those in pursuit of greater power rather than better healthcare apparently doesn’t know that the law features a section which deliberately shuts down many of the best and most effective healthcare providers in the nation. Thanks to a deal forged by ObamaCare’s Democrat authors and associations which represent many of the nation’s largest hospitals, all clinics, treatment facilities and hospitals owned by physicians are being effectively driven out of business.

For years the nation’s critical care hospitals have been unable to successfully compete with the smaller, more specialized, doctor-owned and operated facilities. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “…many physician-owned hospitals have enjoyed profit margins of 20 to 35 percent in recent years. Meanwhile, community hospitals had profits of just 7 percent in 2010.” (1)

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But rather than worry about finding a way to match the quality of care and services offered by the physician-owned operations, the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals struck a deal with Mr. Obama. The hospital groups agreed to go all in, right from the very beginning with unconditional support for ObamaCare in return for language in the ACA which would prevent existing doctor-owned hospitals modernizing and expanding, or new doctor-owned facilities being built at all! (2)

How will this scheme work out for patients?

Each year, the federal government rewards hospitals which provide the highest quality patient care according to the government’s own statistics. In 2012, the No. 1 hospital on the government’s list “… was physician-owned Treasure Valley Hospital in Boise, Idaho. Nine of the top 10 performing hospitals were physician-owned, as were 48 of the top 100.” (3) There are only 238 physician-owned hospitals in the US, yet of the more than 3000 hospital entries catalogued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, this small group occupied 48 of the top 100 spots!

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Remember, thanks to the promise of ObamaCare, MORE patients will be coming on board, needing “quality healthcare” after the 1st day of 2014, NOT fewer! Effectively shutting down existing providers–many of them the highest quality providers in their area–seems to make little sense. How can this be reconciled with the Barack promise of better healthcare for more people?

It can’t! But then again the Affordable Care Act has little to with the dispensing of healthcare. And that of course is the point.

Authors of the Act made certain that federal agencies would amass and share an unprecedented amount of personal information about each ObamaCare participant while select healthcare officials would enjoy the power of life and death over every patient. For a political regime dedicated to the proposition of rule through intimidation, such an arrangement represents the true heart of the Affordable Care Act. It is for these reasons–reasons of power and control– that the left believe the existence of ObamaCare and its long-term viability MUST be guaranteed regardless of cost or legality.

In fact no inevitable ObamaCare “trainwreck,” may be permitted to interfere with the long anticipated plan of subjugating the American people via mandatory “healthcare.” And shuttering the nation’s top healthcare providers in order to secure the services of desperately needed ObamaCare shills selling the “admirable” features of the Act to an unsuspecting public–well that’s all perfectly acceptable. For the Act MUST survive. The patients who may come to depend on it, not so much.